Grieder: Christianity Today editorial calling for...

1of4BATTLE CREEK, MICHIGAN - DECEMBER 18: President Donald Trump leaves his Merry Christmas Rally at the Kellogg Arena on December 18, 2019 in Battle Creek, Michigan. While Trump spoke at the rally the House of Representatives voted, mostly along party lines, to impeach the president for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, making him just the third president in U.S. history to be impeached. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images) *** BESTPIX ***Photo: Scott Olson, Staff / Getty Images

2of4(FILES) In this file photo taken on February 28, 2018 President Donald Trump (L) listens to Billy Graham's eldest son Rev. Franklin Graham during the memorial service for Reverend Billy Graham in the Rotunda of the US Capitol in Washington, DC. - US President Donald Trump lashed out on December, 20, 2019 at a leading evangelical Christian publication that called him "morally lost and confused" and said he should be removed from office. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP) (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)Photo: MANDEL NGAN, Contributor / AFP via Getty Images

4of4A woman stands by the thousands of Christmas lights on River Oaks Boulevard during a visit on Saturday, Dec. 21, 2019, in Houston.Photo: Marie D. De Jesús, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

President Donald J. Trump last week received a lump of coal in his Christmas stocking, courtesy of Mark Galli, the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today .

In an editorial published Dec. 19, the day after Trump was impeached on a mostly party-line vote in the United States House of Representatives, Galli argued that he should be removed from office in 2020—either by the Senate or by the American people.

“We love and pray for our president, as we love and pray for leaders (as well as ordinary citizens) on both sides of the political aisle,” Galli wrote.

He added that, in fairness to the president, Democrats “have had it out for him from day one.”

Still, Galli continued, the facts presented in the House’s impeachment inquirty were unambiguous: Trump attempted to use his power as president to coerce Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, to help him in his efforts to discredit a political opponent, former vice-president Joe Biden.

That’s immoral, in Galli’s view, as well as a violation of the Constitution. And Trump’s character, he noted, has been laid bare at many points even prior to the impeachment inquiry.

“His Twitter feed alone—with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders—is a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused,” Galli observed.

It’s hard to argue with that assessment, if you’ve ever looked at Trump’s Twitter feed. No sooner was Christianity Today’s editorial published, in fact, before Trump took to his smartphone and tore into the magazine, which was founded in 1956 by the evangelical leader Billy Graham.

In a pair of tweets, Trump denounced Christianity Today as a “far left” magazine which has been doing poorly “and would rather have a Radical Left nonbeliever, who wants to take your religion and your guns, than Donald Trump as your president.”

None of the Democrats leading the polls for the party’s presidential nomination, incidentally, are atheists. Biden is Catholic. Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, is Jewish. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, is Methodist, like me. Episcopalians can lay claim to South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

But let’s set that aside, in honor of the First Amendment to the Constitution, which rightly establishes the separation of church and state in this country.

...”No President has done more for the Evangelical community, and it’s not even close,” Trump harrumphed, in his Twitter tantrum, after noting that Christianity Today is no longer formally associated with the Graham family.”

A number of the evangelical leaders who have made common cause with the president over the past several years issued similar denunciations of Galli and the magazine he leads.

Graham’s son Franklin, for example, touted Trump’s record of appointing pro-life judges as well as overseeing a thriving economy.

“Christianity Today said it’s time to call a spade a spade. The spade is this—Christianity Today has been used by the left for their political agenda,” wrote the younger Graham, in a Facebook post taking issue with the editorial.

Many Americans, meanwhile, are understandably skeptical of whether Christianity Today’s editorial would have any impact on the evangelicals who make up its core audience. White evangelical Protestants in 2016 overwhelmingly supported Trump over Democrat Hillary Clinton, , and roughly 70 percent of these Americans continue to approve of Trump’s performance as president, according to the most recent survey from the Pew Research Center.

Such figures are a bit less puzzling when you remember that the term “white evangelical” is meaningless, from a theological perspective. Christianity is a worldwide religion with approximately two billion adherents, the majority of whom are not white—and Christians of various denominations are evangelical, in the sense that we believe in witnessing, if not proselytizing.

In fact, the phrase itself, “white evangelical/born-again Christian,” is a sociological one, cooked up by Gallup in the 1970s.

Put differently, “white evangelicals” are best understood a subset of white American voters delineated by their political views rather than their religious beliefs.

In light of how durable Trump’s support has proven to be among this cohort of voters, it’s hard to imagine that one little editorial will change anything. It’s been a difficult year for some white evangelical Christians anyway.

The Southern Baptist Convention, for example, was left reeling, as the result of a much-needed but deeply painful investigation into sexual abuse by my colleagues at the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News. The “Abuse of Faith” series found that hundreds of Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers have been convicted or credibly accused of sex crimes in the last two decades, leaving at least 700 victims in their wake.

Still, Christianity Today’s editorial is an important one, and well-timed, because Trump is right to say that the evangelical church in America was doing poorly prior to his advent on the political scene.

The proof is the speed, and overt cynicism, with which many evangelical leaders embraced his bid for the presidency.

Many of those same leaders have long been preoccupied with earthly power, even at the expense of the needs of their own congregations, or the broader community.

In this context, for Galli to call for Trump’s removal from office is a significant act of witnessing. His editorial illustrates to other Christians that it’s acceptable tooppose some of their church leaders. Indeed, in the wake of its publication, Trump administration officials acknowledged that white evangelicals disagree with each other about certain things.

“Evangelicals are not monolithic in their political viewpoints,” said Marc Short, the chief of staff to Vice-President Mike Pence, in an appearance Sunday on Meet the Press.

That’s always been the case, but of late it’s been easy to forget .

“To the many evangelicals who continue to support Mr. Trump in spite of his blackened moral record, we might say this: Remember who you are and whom you serve,” Galli wrote.

That’s a message many evangelicals needed to hear in this—and any other—Christmas season.

Erica Grieder joined the Houston Chronicle, as a metro columnist, in 2017. Prior to that she spent ten years based in Austin, reporting on politics and economics, as the southwest correspondent for The Economist, from 2007-2012, then as a senior editor at Texas Monthly, from 2012-2016. In 2013, she published her first book, "Big, Hot, Cheap, and Right: What America Can Learn from the Strange Genius of Texas." An Air Force brat, Erica thinks of San Antonio as home. She is a member of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas's Emerging Leaders Council, and holds degrees from the University of Texas at Austin's LBJ School of Public Affairs and Columbia University, where she majored in philosophy.